Recent Writing

The Dragon’s Breath

Never in my life have I been so happy to see New Mexico’s blue skies.

That’s how I felt after a nearly two-week visit to China, my first. I had been invited to speak about carbon ranching at a conference on water at a university in Zhengzhou, which is a “small” city southwest of Beijing (“small” by Chinese standards means only a million people). Gen and I decided to fly out early and spend six days sightseeing in the capital, including a visit to the Great Wall, which had been on our tourist To Do list for years. We had never visited any country in Asia, in fact, so we were excited about the opportunity to see China up close, if even it was only a glancing view.

I’m not certain that I want to see much more.

Let me say quickly that we were charmed by the Chinese people. Everywhere we went we were greeted by smiles and a vivacity that I had not expected. Whether it was squeezing onto a crowded subway, gathering before the Beijing train station, climbing up the uneven steps of the Great Wall, or flowing en masse through the Forbidden City as fellow tourists, the Chinese were unfailingly upbeat, polite, and full of laughter. They were also neatly and brightly dressed, trim physically, and always on the move (the number of young women wearing high heels on the Great Wall was a big surprise!). The sheer quantity of humanity was also a novelty. Beijing is home to 23 million people and after six days of walking and riding the public transportation system, we felt like we had rubbed elbows with at least two million of them. Perhaps my expectations had been shaped by the cliché of the taciturn, inscrutable oriental of western pop culture, but I was genuinely impressed by the vivaciousness everyone we met and saw. I know I was just scratching surfaces as a tourist, but surfaces matter sometimes and our first impression of China’s people was certainly positive.

China’s charming citizens, however, live in a charmless land.

Perhaps China had been pretty once. It was difficult to tell because everywhere I went, even in Zhengzhou, I could only dimly perceive the country through a persistent veil of smog. We knew going in, of course, that Beijing had a very serious pollution problem. Last winter, the city made international headlines when the level of pollution air zoomed off the charts, choking any citizen who didn’t wear a face mask or employ an air filter. The pictures broadcast to the world of Beijing’s streets, barely discernable through the thick smog, looked liked something from a Dickensian nightmare. The smog is a principally a product of dirty coal plants and unregulated vehicle emissions (from a bewildering array of two, three, and four-wheeled contraptions). Toss in unchecked growth, bureaucratic inaction, dust from nearby deserts, and Beijing’s bowl-like topography and you have a recipe for disastrous air pollution.

The stories actually caused us to pause for a moment in our plans to visit China. In the U.S., an air pollution reading of 70 is considered pretty bad (on a scientific scale called PM 2.5 that counts particles in the air). If it hits 300, the EPA recommends that adults stay indoors. In Beijing this winter, the readings often hovered above 500 for days. 500! Did we really want to spend our precious time together (and scarce dollars) walking around Beijing in that stuff? We supposed we could wear face masks, but what sort of vacation was that? Fortunately, we learned that spring means lower levels of smog, so we crossed our fingers and stuck to the original plan.

...... for the rest see:

 The Carbon Pilgrim blog: http://carbonpilgrim.wordpress.com/

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The Mural

"Murals are large-scale paintings or pictures using a solid structure, such as a wall, as a canvas and are considered public art as they are often placed on buildings or structures. A muralist must have a competent sense of scale and a strong vision in order to create a work of art with any coherence." - wisegeek.com

I am endeavoring here to create a portrait of this remarkable moment in history, largely by focusing on the working lands of the American West. The mural includes my conservation activities, writing endeavors, archaeological work, and a big photographic project. I hope it pleases!  - Courtney